Gorbachev To Employ New Powers

September 26, 1990|Los Angeles Times

MOSCOW -- President Mikhail Gorbachev is ready to use his new powers, which enable him to rule by decree, to begin the development of a market economy in the Soviet Union and to push other radical reforms, his chief economic adviser said on Tuesday.

Nikolai Petrakov, a leading advocate of rapid and radical transformation of the economy, said that many of the presidential decrees have already been drafted and will be issued as Gorbachev decides the the program.

Petrakov said the first steps will be to stabilize the economy with strict controls on government spending, borrowing and creation of money to lay the basis for the 500-day program aimed at establishing a market economy within a year and a half.

Further measures envision the privatization of substantial segments of state-owned industry, agriculture and commerce, and the replacement of central planning with the market forces of supply and demand, he said.

``The president has devised his program, and he will be in charge of elaborating that program,`` Petrakov said. ``You know where his sympathies lie. He now has the extraordinary powers to execute those reforms.``

Many of these decrees were drafted last summer in anticipation that Gorbachev would use special powers that he had been given earlier by the Supreme Soviet, the country`s Legislature, but the measures were held in abeyance as support grew for faster and more radical changes.

Petrakov sought to allay fears that the additional authority Gorbachev won on Monday from the Legislature gave him greater power than any Kremlin leader has had since the death of dictator Josef Stalin.

Petrakov said that Gorbachev needs to rule by decree because the reforms will require ``quick, prompt and sometimes immediate decisions, for example on prices or the budget, as well as energetic implementation of the reforms themselves.``

``To convene Parliament and discuss everything each time would be impossible,`` he said. ``That would destroy the reforms. Fast action will be required. There is no other motive.``